spectrum of illumination
Every genre asks its own question about how to live. The spectrum of illumination sets 13 of them in order, from surviving against your fears in Horror to moving beyond yourself in Romance — each band shedding its own light on how to live a life.
The map
The genreongenre map uses this spectrum as a center-spine to construct a virtual landscape of unique genre combinations. Stitched together with additional genre tiles we create a seemingly infinite map to explore. You can view the spectrum’s primary genres in more detail below and dive deeper with each of their respective Sub-Genres.
Radiant genres
“Radiant genres” is our way of highlighting those films that shine through the boundaries of their original genres to become more. In the definitive print, we identify these films with a specific genre-combination name; in the digital version, we used the TMDB ratings as a proxy to highlight those films that achieve an exceptional critical success.
The digital genres
While the definitive print curates the spectrum with 14 genres and their 91 pairings, the web version manifests the spectrum of illumination as a procedural, digital experience. With live data, our spectrum becomes 13 genres with their 78 pairings. ‘Epic’, ‘Adventure’, ‘Drama’ and ‘Mystery’ genres are introduced and restructured to represent the print’s ‘Myth’, ‘Memoir’, ‘Coming-of-Age’, ‘Gangster’, and ‘Detective.’